My first post. Looking for C&C.

[buddah2099]

This is the first post that I am making on the site. I have only been pursuing photography for around 2 years and love taking pictures. I have had no formal training and all that I have learned has been from trial and error and reading. I am looking for some critiquing. I appreciate any comments anyone might have.

This is the first family portraits that I have done.

 

[Lyncca]

Hey there. These pics aren't too terrible for your first session .
The biggest thing I would recommend is to get off Auto mode and learn how to work your exposure and also get a good flash (it looks like you are using the popup flash, but not sure).

#1) For composition, the this is very centered. I would place the family different in the frame. It is also a little underexposed and the white balance is off. It also looks a litte soft, but it may be the web compression. A good flash or reflector would have helped fill in the shadows under their eyes. I would also clone out the sunny part of the grass.

#2) Cute, but I don't really care for the proccessing and if you were in manual mode you could have avoided the blown out sky with exposing on the sky and adding flash to the kids to light them up.

#3) Really cute, but underexposed. Weird processing and his shoe is clipped just a bit.

#4) She's adorable, but watch for blown out areas on her hair and the flash caused a dark shadow on the right side of her face (camera left).

The rest have similar problems on exposure, white balance, blown out areas, etc. I hope that helps and wasn't too harsh!

 

[Lyncca]

By the way, families wearing white to a session can make your life hell. It is so easy to blow out and loose detail when exposing on their faces. That may be what caused a lot of your exposure problems since you were on Auto.